Dusty Rhodes, RIP

When I was a kid, I did not appreciate Dusty Rhodes. He was heavy, a cloying babyface with dumb moves like the "bionic elbow", and was Ric Flair's perennial whipping boy. When he came to the WWF and threw him in a polka-dot outfit, he was even worse.

I had to go back. Back to Florida, back to the Texas Outlaws, back to his wars with The Sheik, and then forward, to when he appeared in ECW. Then I got him. A good example:



And there's this intriguing snippet:



For a fat guy, he had stamina for days. He could keep up with modern choreography:



And he nailed one of the best promos in professional wrestling history, "Hard Times":



Of course, he had plenty of problems. It took me years to figure out what he meant when he called himself the "ballydawalla" (bull of the woods). When he held the book, his dusty finishes ruined the narrative. But he had that undenial charisma, and his weird body and bizarre dance moves made his matches fairly riveting.

And his kids ended up being great. Goldust is better now, in his mid-40s, then 3/4th of the WWE roster.

RIP Big Dust!


ETA: This blog post coves a lot of Rhodes's ability to appeal to an audience, and may even explain why I didn't care for him so much. In New York City, where I grew up, a working class hero is almost necessarily an immigrant. No surprise that WWF's top champs during my childhood were Pedro Morales and Bruno Sammartino. For the American south, Dusty Rhodes fit that role.